County Government Structural Reform: Influence of State, Region, and Urbanization

This article analyzes the influence of state, region, and urbanizationon adoption of comity government structural reform, exemplifiedby charter adoption, appointment of county administrators, andelection of executives. It examines3, 119 counties on whichdata were available, emphasizing the 786 counties with appointedadministrators, 382 with elected executives, and 117 with charters.These three structural reforms were correlated with urbanizationas measured by three variables for counties nationwide: populationsize, population growth, and per capita income. The reformsalso were examined by U.S. Census regions and subregions. Theneach reform was adjusted to assess the influence of one or afew stales where a given reform was slate-imposed or almostuniversally adopted. For each reform, urbanization was a keyfactor in explaining adoption. Region offered little explanation.The stale also emerged as an important variable     

LEGAL USE OF MENTAL HEALTH EVALUATIONS IN CHILD PROTECTION PROCEEDINGS

The authors examine the use of mental health evaluations in legal decision making within a large, urban juvenile court system. The focus was on court files in child protection cases relating to 171 randomly selected mental health evaluations completed on parents and 44 evaluations completed on children. Parent evaluations (46.7%) were much more likely to be present in court files than child evaluations (5.9%), and evaluations conducted by in-house court clinicians (63.8%) were more often present than those conducted by noncourt clinicians (37.5%). References to evaluations in child welfare, legal, or mental health documents varied with the type of information, subject (parent or child), and source of the evaluation. Findings and/or recommendations of evaluations were cited in legal or mental health documents for approximately two thirds of parent evaluations but only one third of child evaluations. Evaluation findings and/or recommendations were stated as a basis for legal decisions in 36.2% of court-based parent evaluations, 21.0% of noncourt-based parent evaluations, and 2.3% of child evaluations. These results provide evidence of a modest impact of parent evaluations on legal decisions and notably less impact for child evaluations. The authors suggest directions for future research and practice in order to increase the accessibility and usefulness of clinical evaluations in legal decision making.     

Political Science as a Broad Church: The Search for a Pluralist Discipline

In 1996 Robert Goodin and Hans-Dieter Klingemann published an edited collection of essays, A New Handbook of Political Science , that provides probably the best overview of the discipline of political science, at least as seen through the eyes of the mainstream of the profession. Goodin is an American working at the Australian National University, while Klingemann is a German working in Berlin. Nevertheless, their overview represents an American view of political science, which is hardly surprising as more than 75 per cent of living political scientists are American. Overall, they present a picture of the discipline as professional, pluralistic and improving rapidly. Here, we take issue with that view, not as an ambition, but as a reality. In contrast, we argue that political science, particularly US political science, is still dominated by a positivist epistemology and, particularly, by behaviouralist and rational choice approaches that are underpinned by that positivism. We begin by outlining Goodin and Klingemann's argument and critiquing it. Subsequently, we take issue with them empirically, using evidence drawn both from their own edited collection and an analysis of the contents of the two foremost US and UK journals; in the US the American Political Science Review , the American Political Science Association's main journal, and the American Journal of Political Science , and in the UK the British Journal of Political Science and Political Studies , the Political Studies Association's main journal. The methodology adopted is discussed below. In the last section, we consider the consequence of our findings for the future of political science in Britain.     

A test of two models of adolescent egocentrism

The present study investigated two predictors of adolescent egocentrism: formal operational ability and interpersonal understanding. Participants included 87 adolescents from four age groups. Two measures of adolescent egocentrism, two formal operations tasks, and an interview assessing level of interpersonal understanding were administered. Results showed that interpersonal understanding level predicted egocentrism as measured by the personal fable subscale of the Adolescent Egocentrism-Sociocentrism scale, whereas formal operations was not a predictor of any form of adolescent egocentrism. Implications for future research and the relationship between egocentrism and social cognitive development are discussed.This study is based on the master's thesis work of the first author, which was directed by the second author.Received Ph.D. from Wayne State University. Research interest in adult social-cognitive development. To whom correspondence should be addressed.     

Cultural sexism and the UK Higher Education sector

Despite the advances of the feminist movement, and wider structural legislative interventions, women remain under-represented at senior levels within academia and (some) women still experience both direct and indirect forms of discrimination throughout their careers. This article seeks to understand why this might be the case, and what, if anything we can do about it.

Using qualitative interview data which gives voice to women’s experiences, this article explores the cultural dimensions which serve to reinforce women’s structural disadvantage within the academy. Drawing upon these empirical data and informed by reflections on the notion of ‘hegemonic masculinity’ in a neo-liberal environment, this article contends that ‘cultural sexism’ provides a vocabulary through which to make sense of this structural disadvantaging. It is argued here that an understanding of the ‘ordinariness’ of cultural sexism means we can both ‘raise consciousness’, and, explore emancipatory opportunities where cultural resistance and change might be possible.     

Revolutionizing Academic Activism: Transpraxis,Critical Pedagogy,and Justice for a People Yet to Be

One strain of thought that is both consistent with and an amplification of academic activism (Belknap in Criminology 53(1):1–22, 2015) is the critical criminological literature on transpraxis. As a theory of change, transpraxis advances a thesis on the dialogical and relational pedagogy of mutual struggle, of shared being and becoming. In addition, this literature critiques the dominant philosophy of human risk management and the current culture of captivity politics in which the struggle for transformative (i.e., interdependent and collective) change is “finalized.” We argue that, in the present era, processes of humanness and expressions of culture de-vitalize (e.g., homogenize, normalize, territorialize) this existence. In so doing, humanness and culture tend toward Hegelian reaction-negation dynamics, thereby forestalling and/or foreclosing justice for an awaiting people. Accordingly, this article outlines the dimensions of transpraxis as theory, explains how revolutionary academic activism necessitates a critical pedagogy for a people yet to be, and it reconceives the educational terrain of criminological activism as the pedagogy of becoming. We argue that the transpraxis properties of this pedagogy facilitate revolutionary academic activism and further the radical potential of transformative justice. This activism and potential exist for the multitude.     

Bystander Intervention Efficacy to Reduce Teen Dating Violence Among High School Youth Who Did and Did Not Witness Parental Partner Violence: A Path Analysis of A Cluster RCT

Journal of Family Violence - Youth who witness parental intimate partner violence (IPV) are at increased risk of teen dating violence (DV). This analysis of secondary data investigated whether a...